Nebraska data center built to withstand an F3 force gale. What about two?

Fidelity built its new data center near Omaha, Nebraska, which is about 90 miles from where the twin tornadoes struck Pilger, Neb., June 16. Its steel-frame rooms can withstand an F3 force wind, which includes all but the largest tornadoes. Not sure, though, whether it can withstand two of them at the same time.

Another phase of modern data center building addresses how it manages its power supply. There are actually a wide variety of schemes to make power uninteruptible -- and they require some small amount of energy themselves to stay ready at an instant's notice for a switchover. A closet full of 12 volt batteries, with some portion of incoming current flowing through them, is one solution. A gateway between the batteries and alternating current can be built from an insulated gate bipolar transistor, which instantly conveys direct current if the alternating current goes away. That bypasses the need to run a little of the incoming current through the batteries, saving energy, an innovation by the Vantage data center builders.

Midsize companies often struggle just to so an apples-to-apples cost comparison between in house and cloud. Great look inside these data centers, Chris and Charlie. Did anything surprise you here, readers?

Well put, James -- I have heard a number of midsized companies say they're benchmarking their data centers against cloud options, and believe they're competitive on costs. And as you say, cloud doesn't fit well for every app. It seems to me like we're seeing hybrid, but it's hybrid silos -- this goes cloud all the time, that stays on prem all the time, and there's very little dynamic switching (cloud bursting) between cloud and on prem. If others are seeing a lot of that dynamic switching between cloud and on prem, I'd love to hear about it.

Agreed that the larger companies aren't building a secret competitive advantage and are pretty open about how they do datacenter. I am playing from the mid-sized company tees. If you are more effiecient on cost or speed, I still consider that a competitive advantage. At the mid size, having data center and networking architecture designed for your needs can be a win.

My point was a bit cryptic. So many people are looking at cloud plays for infrastructure. While that can make sense for many applications, it isn't the new one size fits all. I think you'll see hybrid cloud/on prem architecture patterns being an advantage.

You note the competitive advantage that comes from the data center. But it's interesting how companies like Facebook are very open about their data center innovations -- seeing data centers as a cost to be lowered, and the more ideas they can share and spur the better. The tactics of running a world-class data center seem well understood, the challenge lies in executing on those tactics and then wringing the most value out, with steps like Capital One is taking to speed development and make sure infrastructure can keep up.

As you saw the drive at FB and Google, other companies will realize you can build a competitive advantage in the data center. That could be speed, cost or security. As big data gets crunched more and more, having a dedicated infrastructure designed to handle it, may provide a competitive advantage.

Fidelity's idea of a just-in-time data center, based on Open Compute hardware, built in modifiable increments is a drastic departure from the fixed in concrete notions that preceded it. Are there other ways to make data centers more adaptable?

What drew Charlie and I to this article idea is that, even in this age of the cloud, we keep seeing companies make major investments in their own data centers. We've written about DC innovation at the Internet companies like Google and Facebook, but these companies profiled here have different needs, from strict regulations to legacy apps.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.